You Promised Me A Kiss
by PoppieJoy
Summary: One-Shot. But then it was a cold December day when I first met you. And you were standing on Venice Beach, about thirty meters from the shore. Every so often, you'd creep forward a little further, until your bare feet were encased in the waves. You were almost daring the sea to bite your toes, daring it to hurt you, daring me to come a little closer.


**So I know it's been a while but I've had this written for an extremely long time, I just haven't been able to upload it. If there are any errors, they are all my fault and I am totally sorry. I also own none of the Glee characters. Enjoy x**

My first significant memory of hiccups is when I was ten and my mother took me to the hospital for one of her check-ups during her pregnancy with my younger brother. We were standing behind the old purple Toyota RAV4 we had, who I had aptly named Barney and she was just pulling something out of the boot when she suddenly paused, straightened up and placed her hand amusingly on her belly.

"Oh listen, Britt. It's hiccuping."

I'd never been more amazed by anything in my whole life.

Her belly had jolted with every hiccup that racked through the baby's growing frame and my mum had chuckled with every one.

I'd learnt there and then that they were not scary.

I remember as we watched the scan take place that the baby still had it's hiccups and the doctor merely smiled and continued on, as if baby's hiccuping inside mummy's tummy's were something she saw every single day.

(It was only when I reached the age of about fifteen when I realised it was her job and that she probably did see baby's hiccuping inside their mummy's tummy's all the time.)

Every time the baby got hiccups after that, my mother would call me and I'd run from whatever I was doing and drop my ear flat onto her tummy, my hands cradling the bump I'd go on to call my brother. I'd blink with gentle surprise every time her belly rose in the air with a tiny excited "wup!" and then look up at my mother with wonder, smiling like I'd just experienced the sun being risen especially for me.

And then when my brother was born a few months later, I spent the majority of my time scurrying after him, picking up the toys he dropped, picking him up every time he fell and wiping his baby drool from his nose and his mouth with my clean sleeve.

(My mother used to do so much washing because of me.)

I never tired of my baby brother.

And when he got hiccups, I'd always look knowingly at my mother and giggle with her, for in our minds we would both remember my ear on her belly and her belly jumping up and down like there was a disco going on inside her womb. I'd turn to my brother, tell him to hold his breath, bend upside down and wait for me to count to ten.

They never went until Mummy picked him up and rocked him softly back and fourth and then he'd usually end up practically asleep so to actually send him to dreamland, I'd stand on the bathroom stool beside his night cot and sing 'Baby Mine' from Dumbo in his ear over and over again until all you could hear was the soft sound of him suckling on his muslin.

My mother got sent to jail when I was sixteen. Apparently for a crime she had committed long before Remi and I were even born. I don't know the exact details and to what extent my mother's crime was. But I do know that it had something to do with our father and drugs.

(It's always drugs.)

But when I'd been sixteen, I hadn't thought about whether or not my mother had crossed borders illegally, or whether or not she'd been called Mary-Anna before I was born or whether or not she'd lied to the government about how many children she had and who they belonged to and where they were living. I hadn't thought about any of that because none of it mattered. None of it mattered at all - not even a little bit.

All I had thought about was the fact that I was losing my mummy and that my mummy was losing us.

I screamed so hard the day they took us away. Remi and I, we didn't have grandparents. We didn't have aunties or uncles or cousins or long lost relatives. We had no one and I don't think neither of us have ever felt so alone in all our lives.

I screamed even harder the next day when they told me Remi was staying with someone else.

We were pulled out of school, removed from the state and taken into care in some awful place in Ohio.

Lima Heights Foster Home was definitely not what you'd call the 'safe haven' it claimed itself to be. The kids were rough and people were mean and _jesus_, did everything stink.

I shared a room with another girl who was a year younger than me. She didn't speak to me the whole time I was there and I only found out her name was Tina when she got fostered. I'd try and ask her whether or not she knew The Fabray's but she never uttered a word.

I spent a good two solid months fighting with the social workers to get any more information on that family. I'd bang on their office door until the glass shattered on my arms and when I got them stitched up, I'd kick and refuse to sit still unless they told me just who this family were.

We'd have group council sessions where everyone would share their fostering story and brag about how amazing their families were and how much they got given by their families and how much support they got from their families and those of us without a family would sit there in stagnating sadness because _fuck it_, we weren't good enough for 'one of them things' and we probably never would be. And I'd sit there with anger laced through my shoes and frustration stitched through my veins because I already had a family and I was being kept away from them and it felt just like I was a wild wolf being shut in from the brightest full moon ever.

People would laugh at me for the scars on my arms because they knew I'd lost my temper and shoved my fist through the office door. They all thought it was hilarious that my mum was sent to jail eighteen years after committing her crime and that my baby brother had been fostered and I hadn't. They thought it was hilarious that I just wanted to see him and that I missed him so much and they thought it was hilarious that I even assumed I would get anywhere with this system.

It wasn't until some dude from my council session called Puck came up to me at the end and said, "Why don't you just ask?"

I'd never thought about 'just asking' before.

When I turned up at the office to knock on the door, Puck at my side, I could see all the social worker visibly shake in anticipation of the glass smashing in. It made Puck and I giggle and it gave me the confidence to enter and ask.

I saw Remi a week later and I have never forgotten the way I felt when I saw that little mop of blonde hair and those tall gangly legs running towards me with a the kind of smile you get on Christmas morning painted right across his pale pink cheeks. He'd grown in the four months we'd been apart and although it wasn't long, I feared four months without his big sister after six years of having her right by his side might have damaged his mental health. And I had half expected him to whisper in my ear something along the lines of, "thank goodness you're finally here", or "Save me from these scary people, Britt." But when I felt his long limbs wrap round my teenage middle, the only things his lips whispered in my ear were, "come and meet my sister." I would have been angry and incredibly jealous had he not then whispered again, "she's your sister too."

Quinn Fabray was my rock for the two months Remi and I were in and out of the foster system. And until the Fabray's agreed to foster the two of us together, Quinn spent every minute she could with me at the home. I'd never had a sister before and to suddenly be granted with one who spent all her time dreaming up glamour, I felt a little for the first time, like I'd hit the jackpot.

Remi and I had fallen so completely in love with Quinn and her parents, her older sister Francesca, her older brother Fredrick and her younger sister Madeline, that I hadn't realised we'd not received mail from our mother.

It came on the 22nd August and it promised the two of us that things would get back to normal by the time we started school.

We started school two weeks later and things were definitely not back to normal.

With Remi, it was easy. He made new friends as quick as corks fly out of champagne bottles. With me - well, I had Quinn. And Quinn had the whole world at her feet. People would practically bow every time they passed her in the hallway and some even fell into the bins at either side from trying not to catch Quinn's eyes.

It made me laugh because Quinn was such a delicate and secret little flower, yet everyone saw her as this giant beanstalk with more than one giant at the top. I wondered if anyone had ever been as brave as Jack and had actually climbed to the top and entered her castle.

Puck also went to McKinley High School and he had the majority of his classes with me.

"Pierce," He'd whisper during math class, the rubber end of his pen encased within his lips, "How's the little dude? The one you smashed your arms up for?"

He always had a book thrown his direction by Quinn but I'd always smile fondly.

Christmas arrived and it was my first without my mother. The Fabray's made a huge deal out of the holiday and even told Remi and I that it was our decision whether or not we wanted to go to church in the morning. I'd never been before so Remi and I had both gone and for the years after that, Christmas Day had been a particular favourite of mine.

And so college came swiftly round the corner and I was headed for UCLA and Quinn was headed for Yale. Saying goodbye to The Fabray's was possibly, nearly, maybe just as hard as saying goodbye to my own mother - although for totally different reasons. They'd been good to me and they'd given me opportunities I might never have had, had my mother not been locked behind bars. Especially since she wasn't going to be released for another four years.

I remember when I said goodbye to Remi that he started hiccuping and I missed my mother more than I'd ever missed her in my whole entire life. He was so little and he was being abandoned by his last remaining family member and I've never felt more horrible in all my days. Watching him waving at the doorstep of The Fabray's Lima townhouse, from where I was knelt on the backseat of Quinn's Range Rover, was like a whole chunk of my heart was being ripped from inside my ribcage and all I could do was watch as it fell what felt like three feet in front of Remi's worn Batman sneakers.

(I'm not sure I'll ever forget that feeling.)

UCLA was perfect for me. Becoming a midwife was perhaps the best idea Remi had ever given me.

("Maybe you should help babies be born if you love me so much.")

Quinn and I would Skype nearly every night and when we didn't, I had Remi in my ear galloping on about the planets and the stars and the universe, trying to tell me as much information in the fifteen minutes he was allowed to speak before bedtime.

(I missed him so much.)

And then it was Winter and it was practically raining babies at my local hospital. The glowing and chill-toasted faces of all the new parents was enough to fill all our hearts with love and when I delivered my first pair of twins on the same night Quinn got her first poem published in her local newspaper, I had this enormous and entirely overwhelming feeling that this was my month. Quinn and my month. Our month to get everything right and to bring as many smiles to fading faces as we could.

Quinn met this boy - Sam Evans - who took her to this local homeless shelter on their first date, introducing her to the world of giving back. She watched as all the little faces of the children who she said were, "just like you, Britt," came round and round again for seconds of foods she thought looked disgusting and seconds of hugs where she felt instantly like there was a family to be had with this Sam Evans.

All the new parents at the hospital found Winter to be a blessing in disguise with their little ones. It was difficult to decipher why anyone could be sad at this time of year when they had the tiniest, most precious lives balanced in the palms of their lost yet timelessly natural hands.

But then it was a cold December day when I first met you.

And you were standing on Venice Beach, about thirty meters from the shore. Every so often, you'd creep forward a little further, until your bare feet were encased in the waves. You were almost daring the sea to bite your toes, daring it to hurt you, daring me to come a little closer.

I was breathless.

(So were you.)

"Aren't you gonna freeze?" I called out through the wind, when I saw you stepped in further.

You turned to face me as if you'd always known I'd be there.

"Would it be so bad if I did?"

I hadn't known what to say to that.

You'd spent a solid ten minutes in that ocean, only coming out because your lips had gone blue and I'd mentioned I'd kiss them pinker.

"I seem to recall you promised me a kiss," You practically purred as we sat in that coffee shop behind the palm trees, warming you up.

"Yes," I had replied, keeping our eyes locked together as I finished my last sip, "I think I did."

We hadn't stopped kissing for so, so long outside your apartment door when I dropped you home. I think it possibly warmed my heart up more than your lips.

And when you got the hiccups, I giggled into your mouth and you asked me why.

I told you beneath your pale white sheets that night, in between stolen kisses and wavering touches how my mother and I would listen to my baby brother's hiccups before he was born and how she was taken away from us and we were forced to make a new life and how I possibly enjoyed that new life more than my old life and how I thought that wasn't okay.

We never questioned that we were two girls.

And we never questioned that it had only been nine hours.

We just fell in love.

"Santana," I moaned one evening, as I felt the length of your pointer finger run down the broken curves of my exhausted spine, your lips tracing the outlines of my terrified jaw, "I think I might be in love with you."

Your finger halted on it's way to my lower back and your kisses became frozen wishes. I could hear your breath, uneven like we'd already finished what we had been previously enjoying. It struck my heart and stopped beating for several seconds, until you removed your hand from my back, placed it in between my legs and kissed me so deeply, I swear I grew wings and just flew into your soul.

You brought me so close to your own edge of desire that when you had me whimpering and panting and crumbling in your strong, beautiful arms, you took me so close to your face and whispered, "Brittany..."

("Brittany", you said.)

"I am so, so, so in love with you."

We may as well have flown away together, in the same soul.

(You were always such a beautifully perfect flirt.)

You told me you were in love with me a lot from that moment on.

When we were studying for our final exams; when we made cupcakes that time and spilt the flour all over the floor; when we went skinny dipping in the cold December sea; when we boarded the flight back home to see Remi and The Fabray's; when we told Quinn and her parents we were together; when my mother came out of jail and Remi and I visited her for the first time; when I cried during The Lion King; when we moved in together; when we went grocery shopping; when I fell over the telephone wire in our second apartment; when we called the wrong number for a simple pizza delivery and we couldn't stop laughing for anything; when we adopted a kitten and I persuaded you to call her Ice Ice Baby; when you proposed at the top of that ferris wheel in the middle of nowhere; all the while we walked down the aisle together and then when we reached the end; when your dad gave me his blessing; when you and your dad opened up together about how your mum had died when you were three and your father had raised you alone; when I got so mad at you I threw a vase through the shower door; when you told me you loved my temper as much as you loved my heart because it was a part of me; when you hit yourself over and over again until my temper eventually faded; when you got mad at me and left me alone in the house for fourteen hours and came home repeating over and over again how in love with me you were and how sorry you were too; when you asked if we could try for a family; when you fell pregnant the first time; when we lost the baby; when you fell pregnant a second time and when I delivered her.

You've told me you're in love with me so many times that there is no way I could doubt you.

(Well, Santana, I'm in love with you too.)

So now when I wake up on this beautiful July morning and the sun is shining so bright through our sun-kissed curtains and I hear the soft familiar sound of Piper singing along to Dora The Explorer, Madison playing football with Uncle Remi outside, Joey charging up and down the hallway with his X-Men, Mum taking down all the July 4th banners, Auntie Quinn and Uncle Sam warming up bottles for Peter.

And you - you who is hiccuping. I can't help but feel like everything is because of you. And I am, and we are, all because of you.

"Baby," I whisper, nudging your shoulder.

You roll over exasperatedly. "Dammit, Britt, I was trying not to wake you."

I giggle. "You're hiccuping."

You keep a steady look in my eyes and then you bite your lip and I just love when you giggle too.

"Come here," You say, as you pull me into the crook of your arm and snuggle me into you. You place your fingers under my chin and pull my face up to look at you.

You hiccup. I smile.

"Britt," You say, your lips twitching with a smirk. I wait for it, because I know what you're gonna ask me to make the hiccups stop. The same thing you ask me every time you want them to stop.

"Kiss me."


End file.
